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Police lock down Kelowna mall after bomb threat

Police have locked down Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna in what is being termed a police situation.

Photograph by: Ian Lindsay
, PNG Files

RCMP officers evacuated then locked down a Kelowna mall late Thursday to search for a bomb.

Police ordered shoppers and employees to leave Orchard Park Mall after they received a bomb threat at 5:45 p.m., according to Cpl. Bill Parmar. Bomb sniffing dogs were brought to the scene but kept from the building until officers could make a search plan.

“There’s no specific threat made to any particular store, which has obviously caused some concern here for how to determine where to start from,” said Parmar.

He said the first step was to bring the dogs in to sweep the mall, then to search each individual store. Police asked employees with keys to stay at the scene until the search was complete.

Justin McCartney said he was inside the mall at the food court before it was evacuated. He realized something was wrong when he saw police at Payless ShoeSource.

“I saw a single RCMP officer talking to the staff,” he said. “Payless ShoeSource then closed the gate across the entrance, but they still had customers inside.”

He said the officer then started walking through the mall, closing other stores, one by one.

“It was several minutes before customers were given any instructions to leave,” McCartney said, adding that by that time customers were already starting to follow employees out the door.

“There was no indication at the time as to what was going on,” he said.